Incident Report No. 28

Here we are with another edition of the Incident Report, a week in review of small press crime fiction for February 4th through the 10th. Last week I said I’d stop posting links to articles here and send you to my Facebook page or Twitter account because of the amount of time it was taking me to put everything together. Turns out, by sending my links to Twitter, I was able to find an easy and less cumbersome way to get collect the links. So here you are. Shake your stick at these links because there are lots of them. Oh, and if you look closely at the the book release sections you see some other genres in there.

A take on the familiar ‘bodice ripper’ Regency romances, this popular romance category tends to revolve around Amish and other Mennonite communities. Perhaps inspired by Harrison Ford’s romance in the film Witness, many authors have found success with these tales of love among the hay bales.

“This is an observation rather than a rule,” she laughs, “and there are lots of counter examples. And, as with anything in Dickens, it is the circumstance rather than the comestible that is most telling. Tea is often (though not always) part of a comfortable and feminine ritual; coffee-drinking was seen as more vigorous and powerful, thanks perhaps to its caffeine boost, but also to its association with the [19th-century] coffee houses where men gathered to talk politics.”

Though “weeding” has always taken place at libraries, experts say the pace is picking up. Finances are one factor. Between staffing, utility costs and other expenses, it costs an estimated $4 to keep a book on the shelf for a year, according to one 2009 study. Space is another; libraries are simply running out of room.

“About five years ago, I was sitting in my living room, complaining about grading essays or something and why couldn’t things just be easier, why couldn’t I just be a writer, blah, blah… and so on. My no-nonsense husband looked over at me and said “Just fucking do it already. If you want to be a writer, write a damn book.” “

“When police challenge rape victims, accuse them of lying, victims often shut down and sometimes even recant… That then reinforces the belief that many rape claims are false, which leads police to challenge the next victim. It can become a cycle.”

“Though not a patron herself, she knew that a library card was a passport, a way for her only child to travel beyond the hemmed-in mountain hollows and valley town. First imaginatively, and then for real.”

“One of the pleasures of The Burial Society is that Sadowsky keeps a tight rein on the action … Unfortunately, this also leads to one the book’s pitfalls, too; the constant action leaves little time for character development.”

“Before we know it, what looks at first like your basic spy thriller morphs into something far different — a tricky game of three-character monte filled with sly twists that Herron reveals with the precision of a high-end Swiss watchmaker.”

“[Fiction is] the result of a dissatisfaction with the world that prompted the question: how could it be different? It tackles questions that don’t have a clear answer to and therefore can’t be answered by non-fiction.”